It ultimately challenges the cultural assumptions of both conservatives and traditional liberals. 47 photographs.

    Then, Aphrodite, taking pity on this man whose love could not reach beyond the barrier of stone, brought the statue to life and gave her to Pygmalion as his bride. Centuries later, George Bernard Shaw captured the magic of this legend in his celebrated play, Pygmalion. Pygmalion became Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics, his statue an untutored flower girl from the streets of London, and the barrier between them is class.. Shaw expected Eliza to end up with Freddy and run a flower shop.In My Fair Lady, Alan Jay Lerner takes the legend one step further—the barrier is swept away and Higgins and Eliza are reunited as the curtain falls on one of the loveliest musical plays of our time—winning seven Tonys® for its original Broadway production, and seven Oscars® for its film adaptation.--back cover

    He has taken the ordinary West End drawing room comedy convention - understatement, upper-class accents and all - and used it as a vehicle for utterly serious ideas.' Observer

    It could not anticipate what was to come after, neither could it grasp what had happened in literary theory in the light of where it was to lead.

    In the characters and their circumstances details of Joyce's life are evident. The main character, Richard Rowan, the moody, tormented writer who is at odds with both his wife and the parochial Irish society around him, is clearly a portrait of Joyce himself. The character of Rowan's wife, Bertha, is certainly influenced by Joyce's lover and later wife, Nora Barnacle, with whom he left Ireland and lived a seminomadic existence in Zurich, Rome, Trieste, and Paris. As in real life, the play depicts the couple with a young son and, like Joyce, Rowan has returned to Ireland because of his mother's illness and subsequent death.One can also detect hints of Joyce's interest in Nietzsche in Rowan's flawed pursuit of total individual freedom despite the stifling morals of Irish society. Though wrestling with guilt over his own infidelities, Rowan insists on this personal liberty, not only for himself but for his wife as well, who he knows is tempted by his cousin's amorous overtures.Joyce's decision to express himself in the form of a play no doubt reflects his long admiration of the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. In the tense dialogue, the largely interior drama focused on the characters' relationships, the undertones of guilt, and the longing for freedom one sees similarities with Ibsen's themes. Also the spare, understated writing style - so unlike Joyce's exuberant, playful, and experimental use of language in his novels - shows the influence of Ibsen's "naked drama" (as Joyce described Ibsen's style in a published review). Above all, Joyce emulated the Scandinavian master in making the central issue of his drama the conflict between individual freedom and a demanding, judgmental society. In Exiles the protagonists struggle with the choice between living in defiance of the rigid conventions of Irish society or exile from their homeland.Though lesser-known, Exiles, written after Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and while Joyce was working on Ulysses, provides interesting insights into the development of the creative gifts of a literary genius.

    The life of Molière, born Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, is a story of struggle and dedication, and Bulgakov tells it with warmth and compassion.

    The authentic sense of danger of Lorca's theatre is finely conveyed here in John Edmunds's fluent and rhythmic new translations that lend themselves admirably to performance.